Are you tired of hearing that it’s never been more difficult to get your book published? Do you want to get published today and reach a potentially huge international audience? Are you sick of doom-and-gloom assessments of the publishing industry? Do you find interminable lists of rhetorical questions irritating? Then perhaps it’s time for me … Continue reading »
Friday Fry-Up
We kick this fry-up off with a boldly-titled article from John Barber: There Will Be No More Professional Writers in the Future. It takes a pessimistic point of view of the changes undergoing publishing, bringing forth a series of arguments about the aggregation of free content and the rise of self-publishers who have outflanked the … Continue reading »
Heated Debate at The Harrowgate Crime Writing Festival
It’s been a week since the Harrowgate Crime Writing Festival in the UK, but there are parts of the internet that are still buzzing about the events at their Wanted for Murder: The eBook panel. This shouldn’t be surprising, really, given that the title of the panel session alone seems designed to court controversy and … Continue reading »
Cover Stories
In a world where big brands frequently misunderstand the internet, it’s refreshing to see one of the worlds most polite cease and desist letters sent to US author Patrick Wensink regarding the similarities between his book cover (above) and the Jack Daniels whiskey label. In a situation where the could have come accross looking like … Continue reading »
How to Make A Living Writing Short Stories
The conventional wisdom in publishing says that it’s impossible to make a living writing short fiction, regardless of the genre that you’re working in. The individual story markets don’t pay enough, the phrase I have a short story collection you may be interested in seems to terrify publishers, and readers seem to have thrown their … Continue reading »
Friday Fry-Up
Story Shots has a list of 22 Storybasics I’ve picked up in my time at Pixar, featuring a range of advice from the expected (“1: You admire a character for trying more than for their successes”) to the surprising (#20: Exercise: take the building blocks of a movie you dislike. How d’you rearrange them into … Continue reading »
Friday Fry-Up
We’re sneaking in late this week, but here’s our regularly scheduled fry-up of tasty links to whet your appetite for the writing week to come. We’re kicking off with an important one: How to Decide When to Work for Free by Penelope Trunk. It’s good advice, and something worth thinking about, but its always worth checking … Continue reading »
Friday Fry-Up
We open our Fry-Up with the news that the Spunc (the Small Press Underground Networking Community) has announced its Inaugural Independent Publishers Conference and a new prize for small publishers, The Most Underrated Book Award. The conference is set to take place at the Wheeler Centre, Melbourne, in November of this year. Writer’s Beware has a great post … Continue reading »
Friday Fry-Up
According to the New York Times the rise of the ebook market has come with one indelible truth for writers: One Book a Year is Slacking Off. It seems writers in every genre are being asked to produce that little bit faster – whether it’s an extra story or novella, or a whole new series of books. … Continue reading »